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Yet again today, we have more examples/evidence of the Conservatives deciding to use stimulus funds for partisan gain.

First, more studies from independent media researchers that continue to show that Conservative ridings are getting disproportionate funding advantages over opposition held ridings:

The investigation — a two-week project by The Chronicle Herald, the Ottawa Citizen and journalism students from Ottawa’s Algonquin College — found that across the country, Conservative ridings received $4.7 billion, more than half of the $8.5 billion announced under the federal government’s Building Canada infrastructure program…The analysis found that the federal government has announced, on average, $32.8 million in infrastructure spending in each Conservative riding, $9.2 million […]

So, my last blogpost observed yesterday one of the levels of government was going to get blamed by the public for the H1N1 vaccine shortage if it continued. I didn’t say who I thought should be blamed; I just said someone was going to be if this situation continued. If you read the headlines and commentators today from various sources, you see that the federal Conservative government seems to be getting a share of the blame for this crisis.

Even as Harper-hating as I am, I’m not quite personally at the stage where I’m ready to condemn them as being at major fault for the situation over H1N1 and […]

A hat tip to Steve V on his excellent blogpost on this new bit of partisan pork barrel hilarity and hi-jinks from Industry Minister Tony Clement. After reading this and finding out that Clement has engaged in more pork barrel partisan shenanigans for his riding, I really want to know – did Clement secretly get named by Stephen Harper to a new portfolio called The Minister for Conservative Pork Barrelling? I mean, Clement barely tried hiding this as legitimate spending efforts:

A $50-million fund to build infrastructure for next June’s G-8 summit is being spent partly on projects that are far from the summit site and have tenuous links to […]

It’s been said by some political observers that the Conservative Party and Harper are most effective when they can say and do stuff from scripted moments. When they get into unexpected crises and trouble that crops up unexpectedly however, they go off-message and make blunders. That appears to be the case here with the Conservative government trying to deflect criticism of themselves favoring Conservative held ridings over opposition party ridings when doling out stimulus funds. You see another example of that today, with cabinet minister Tony Clement getting his “facts” just plain wrong:

Last week, Industry Minister Tony Clement attempted to deflect questions about the amount of spending on hockey […]

..and crediting it to my party instead. Here I am sending you all your very own partisan infrastructure stimulus funding novelty cheque:

Do you also want to be a Conservative MP for a day? Create your own novelty cheque.

By the way, on a more serious and related note, read the Jim Travers article this AM on this pork-barrelling the Conservatives are engaging in:

Almost daily reports that the ruling party is favouring ridings it holds now and those it hopes to win soon mask deeper problems. Conservatives either don’t know or won’t say precisely how all those taxpayer dollars are being spent.

A press release and report from Gerard Kennedy that is now at the Liberals homepage that you might find of interest:

Stephen Harper’s pork-barrel politics extends to Northern Ontario, where he let Tony Clement give Conservative ridings twice as much infrastructure funding as opposition-held ridings, a Liberal analysis shows. Under the first comprehensive look at all of the stimulus funds in announced in Northern Ontario, the Conservatives gave their two Northern Ontario ridings an average of $35 million, compared to $18 million on average for the other eight ridings in the region held by opposition parties.

It appears Minister Clement’s riding did very well in getting stimulus money, which shouldn’t […]

I saw this fellow being quoted over at Impolitical’s blog this AM, but I think his analysis of Harper is well worth repeating:

Michael Behiels, a native of Alberta’s Peace River country, teaches Canadian constitutional history at the University of Ottawa. He says Harper’s approach to politics and governance is shaped by his Christian fundamentalism. “Harper is a fundamentalist ‘values’ conservative and his evangelical Christian views drive both his domestic and foreign policy agendas,” Behiels continues. “On foreign policy, Harper is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican who maintains that the U.S., Canada and the U.K. have a mission, a religious duty, so to speak, to impose an American form of democracy on […]

..this one is done by the Globe and Mail, and they find more evidence of Conservatives funneling money disproportionately to ridings they held over ones held by opposition parties – this time in reference to funding for recreational facilities:

A high-profile Harper government stimulus program created to build hockey rinks and other recreation projects has funnelled about 33 per cent per cent more money to Conservative seats than to opposition ridings in the battleground province of Ontario. An analysis by The Globe and Mail shows Tory ridings received an average of $2.1-million, compared to $1.5-million on average for opposition ridings.

Gerry Nicholls, who worked with Stephen Harper at the right-wing National Citizens Coalition several years ago, and has been one of Harper’s most vocal critics from the right-wing conservative side of the Canadian political spectrum over all these partisan maneuvers the Conservative government is attempting to do with politicizing the Economic Action Plan (the various list of partisan things they’ve been doing is listed at my previous blogpost) was quoted last night on the CBC National as saying this:

“When I worked with Stephen Harper at the national citizens’ coalition, this kind of stuff used to drive him crazy when governments would use public money for partisan purposes.”

Ok, so the Conservative government is now claiming they weren’t aware of the Canadian Armed Forces having stopped the transfer of detainees to the Afghanistan authorities (even though most of us agree that it was a GOOD thing this happened, the Harper government seems embarrassed by it – maybe because of all those “You’re all Taliban lovers” attacks it hurled at the opposition parties when it was asked to halt the transfers after the allegations of prisoner abuse first came up).

Courtesy of the sharp eyes of Jimbobby, however, we find this story in the Ottawa Citizen about the testimony at the Federal Court involving the Amnesty/BCCLA lawsuit: